In the
editorial this month we would like to send messages of support
and warmth to all the brave teachers and students in areas of
the world that have been going though such difficult times
recently. In particular, we are thinking of the people
of Christchurch, New Zealand after the earthquake of February
22 and the people of Japan after the earthquake and tsunami of
March 11.

Among the new resources this month,
one of our favorites is "Sprucing Up The
Down-At-Heel" (Upper-Intermediate Instant
Lesson). In Paris' upmarket St Germain
district, hairdresser Lucia Iraci spends her days coiffing the
city's glitterati, including actors, models and musicians. Yet
once a month she opens her doors to a more downtrodden
clientele, offering free pampering and a dash of glamor to
women from poor districts who are often long-term unemployed
or victims of abuse and even slavery. This lesson
looks at both the lives of Iraci and the people she helps. In
times when helping others is not just a good thing to do, but
an essential, it may help to be inspired by a woman like this.

How much do you value free speech? Do teachers have
the right to critique their students to others? And if we
do, how careful do we need to be? Read the story of the
high school teacher who commented negatively on her students
on a blog, and was then suspended after her comments were
shared by a student on Facebook. (Teacher's Critical
Blog Private? - Intermediate Instant
Lesson) This is a lesson that is bound to
cause a lot of debate among your students.

Please try
to make this a month in which you watch out for, and try and
help, the people around you.

- Teacher's Critical Blog
Private? - Intermediate Instant LessonA high
school English teacher who was suspended from her job after
she blogged that her students were "rude, disengaged, lazy
whiners." Free speech, teaching and students, adverb
'still'.

- Long Live The Book - Upper
Intermediate Instant LessonBooks may be in decline in
other parts of the world but the book industry is
thriving in India. Future of books, printed books and
e-books, reading habits of different nationalities,
India.

This month's Point of
Interest

This month's Point of Interest comes from the
Upper-Intermediate Instant Lesson "
Sprucing Up The Down-at-heel ".

"I like to think I bring something out in them, give
them support, comfort and perhaps the pointers they need to go
out and face the world ," Iraci told Reuters.

Nearby, a top
make-up artist gave one of the women tips on eye shadow and
blusher, while another woman lazed in a leather salon chair
waiting for her highlights to take effect.

Born into a
modest Sicilian family and placed in an orphanage at a young
age, Iraci is no stranger to hardship. After running away
to Paris penniless at the age of 15, dreaming of romance and
glamor, she found a job in a hairdressing salon and gradually
fought her way to the top. She then decided she wanted to
give something back.. After starting her once-a-month days
for women in distress, she is about to open a permanent salon,
with help from the Paris Town Hall, offering haircuts for just
a few euros in a poor northern district of Paris known as
"Little Africa" because of its high immigrant population and
high poverty levels. Iraci knows she's only providing
temporary relief to women struggling with situations she
admits can be terrifying.But watching her clients step out
of the salon onto the affluent streets of St Germain, the
transformation is clear." I feel like I'm walking on
air," said Anne-Marie, 49, an unemployed mother of two
battling to find employment.'

Thomson Reuters 2011

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